My family came to New York City (and Buenas Aires) between 1913 and 1916. I want to know what was going on in Corato then that made so many leave while others stayed. No one ever talked about life in Corato when I was growing up. No one ever talked about the steamship that crossed the ocean to Ellis Island. Now it's too late. They are all gone.
Web sites I have tried only give minimal information. I would like to find in depth articles, if possible.

If you can read italian there are numerous pieces of information about Corato Italy. Primarily you can go to www.tiscali.it and insert Corato int he title and you can also go to www.google.com and insert Corato Italy in the title if you do not read italian. You can also go to www.comuni.it and insert Corato in the lower right side and click on the name that appears for Corato and then you will sede that you can send an e-mail and review the Corato website which is in Italian as well. Peter

Dear Blastella there are more than 1,570 references in english to Corato Italy in the www.google.com website so after researching these items you will become an expert because you will read what you want to instead of relying on other people to tell you what they think you want to know. Peter[/img]

thanks for the two Italian sites. I've been to google. I google everything.
I have signed up for an Italian class starting later this month. My family had their own dialect. Only they could understand each other. My father was the first born in the US and married an Irish girl. We did not speak any form of Italian growing up. Wish my cousins and I would have paid attention to knowing the past.
Some of us are wondering if our ancestors were Turks.

Well you certainly are an intelligent young lady!! How may I assist you? When conducting genealogy research the basic rule is to work backward from the USA to Italy starting with the immigrant who came to the USA. I can help you with Argentina indices so if you give me the name of youir ancestoir I can check for you. In the meantime, if you go to the library and borrow or even buy a valuable reference book ITALIAN GENEALOGICAL RECORDS by Traffor R. Cole you will be able to not onky know your family easily back to 1809 and then even earlier to the 16th century. But for starters go to www.ellisiland.org and register and then start looking up your ancestors arrival in the USA. You will see names and if you click on the ships manifest for that person you can find out many vital facts. You can even write to Italy for documents and then youj can go to the nearest family history library of the Mormon church near your home in Colorado and obtain the civil records of all births, marriages and deaths in Corato back to 1809 to 1910. Peter

I'm not a young lady - - I'm closing in on 59 years young. But that was a nice thing for you to say.

I have my ancestors lined up from a family tree done in 1989 by an elderly cousin and I've got the manifest of the Giuseppe Verdi where I found my 31 year old grandmother with her first four children leaving Naples for NYC. They left on Dec. 15,1915 and arrived at Ellis Island on Jan. 6, 1916. There was one part of the LaStella family that went to Argentina but they eventually came to Brooklyn where everyone else had settled.

I would like to find the history of Corato and why the people there who were farmers left in droves for the unknown in the USA. I found many of my other relatives on the same ship manifest. Cousins and friends who then married when they were older.

The book you suggested sounds fascinating. I will go to Barnes or Amazon to find it. Thank you.

I grew up in Queens, New York. Because of Classmates.com I have found three girl friends from when we were teens (and younger). Sure we knew we were all Italian but just now 40+ years later we found out our relatives all were from Bari, Italy. We hope to someday hit a lottery and take a cruise ship across to Naples and then across land to Bari to see where we came from. Sounds nostalgic doesn't it. Well, the truth is that one of my friends will not fly. Hence the ship.

Dear BLJ You certainly can fool a fella! But learning a foreign language at your age is indeed remarkable. As for Corato, Italy was united in 1872 which prior to that time, Italy was divided into 8 kseparate entities established by Napoleon in 1812. That consisted of Piedmont (french),Kingdom of Italy (controlled by Napoleon), Lucca (controlled by Napoleon,empire of the French,6 Naples (controlled by napoleon,7 Sicily, (independent) and Sardinia (independent). When napoleon was defeated Italy again divided into the kingdom of the two sicilies with central, southern Italy and Sicily . Northern Italy was then in the hands of the House of Savoy and the papal states which consisted of Piedmont-Sardinia. Corato was part of Southern Italy and that area flourished with factories, agriculture and trade while northern Italy went into a decline. This prompted many italians in the north to immigrate to South America Argentina, Uruguay and Chile to a lesser extent. After unification the kingdom of the two sicilies dissolved and their treasurty looted and the factories shipped up north and the land was taken over by the House of Savoy and all the then rich northerners eaving southern Italy in an economic depression. Peasants went without work or food, the cities depopulated and at the last moment AMERICA called AMERICA NEEDED LABORERS and so everyone in souther Italy who was starving and unemployed immigrated to the USA. People in Corato were part of this great migration. Peter

Corato as you know is a small village in the Province of Bari, Postale (zip) 70033 in the puglia region. it is an agricultural vcillage growing olives, almonds and wheat. If you go to www.tiscali.it and put in Corato you will get many specific references about Corato in Italian. Peter

BLASTELLA wrote:My family came to New York City (and Buenas Aires) between 1913 and 1916. I want to know what was going on in Corato then that made so many leave while others stayed. No one ever talked about life in Corato when I was growing up. No one ever talked about the steamship that crossed the ocean to Ellis Island. Now it's too late. They are all gone.Web sites I have tried only give minimal information. I would like to find in depth articles, if possible.

Where in Queens did you grow up. My great-grandmother Angela Leone was born in Corato and then moved to Gravina in Puglia. Her brother Vincenzo Leone was also born in Corato, moved to Gravina and then moved with his family to NYC around 1904. They lived first in Manhattan and then in Queens - Astoria and Corona.

I have been trying to find older family records that most certainly are in Corato, Italy as well. My husbands father immigrated as an adult from Corato in the early 1930's and so did his brothers in the late 1920's and early 1930's. They had some cousins come as well around those times and one who apparently came even earlier and helped the others come to America. My husband and I were very fortunate to be able to go with his father back to Corato in the late 1970's, while we were based with the Air Force in Northern Italy for three years. But unfortunately, I was young and had no thoughts about trying to figure out this "very large" Italian Family I had married into. Now in my late 50's, I have been working on Family Genealogy for our sons and nieces and nephews. I am at a major impass with my search, because the people who know the family prior to my husbands father , brothers, and parents are deceased now, and all the records are in Corato. I am in Colorado Springs, Colorado. I have been told there is a huge deposit of records from parts of Italy at the Mormon Center at the Broadmore Branch of the LDS Genealogical Research Center, but have not been able to find out if records from Corato or that region are there. But our last name is so unusual, and so "specific" in it's spelling that I am convinced that anyone with that last name from that region has to be related. Especially considering how large most of the families were. The last name is DeBenedittis, and in actuality apparently comes from Greek origins, though the family always said they were from Corato for Centuries! I am hoping someone reading this may have more information on where to access family records from Corato and the region. Thanks for ANY help anyone may have!